Bangalore, City of Baked Beans
“So this is the City of Baked Beans, eh?” Roz said, eye brow raised in her Best Mr. Spock imitation. “Fascinating,” she pronounced. It seems a visiting king or prince or whatever, upon visiting the region like around 100 BC was offered a bowl of beans by an inhabitant and they were so good (the beans, not the resident, although she could have been) declared the place “Bendakaalooru” which turned into Bengalaroo, the way it is known in the local Kannada language (no mention if they were from modern day Canada. It could have happened.) WE didn’t wee any baked beans, but we did see a Bangalore of the IT industry, leader in India, a Westernizing city, where you may not have baked beans but traditional foods and an auto rickshaw blast by with twenty computers lashed to its frame, dodging crazily down the street. You could see these contrasts sitting at the terraces of some of the hotels Bangalore India provides (though we did not see the Baked Bean Hotel, we think there should be one).
We were listening in on the fine Indian fellow leading a tour of Korean tourists at the Palace of Tippi Sultan talking about the history of the region. The Palace is an ornate Mughul designed dream scape of impossibly beautiful and overwrought architecture and styling that is just plain fun to look at , forcing me to wonder, how did they do all this? We got kind of close to the group, listening to his lilting description of the Palace “…the city was founded by Kempa Gowda in 1537 AD…” when he gave us the stink eye for honing in on his talk without paying and so we wondered off our own way.
07.6.09Bangalore: Myth and Movement
When on the lookout for fantastic four-star hotels, Bangalore will definitely come up on the radar as a place to be. There are incredible accommodations here, and our unique mixture of the old and the new, tradition and innovation, will make our guests happy. There is an unearthly sense here of total rejuvenation of the mind and body, and our hotels blend relaxation with the liveliness of being in a fascinating city. Bangalore as an urban center has much to offer the world tourist. There are vivacious cultures here that make up the social heartbeat here, that is hard to match anywhere else on earth. Bangalore has an interesting history, and an even more interesting present.
Visitors will find many ways to spend their time, sight-seeing, touring, or just people watching in the busy parts of town. There is a very lively night life, and live art is excellent and there is an enormous variety. The visual arts are also extremely strong here, as evidenced by the recent Myth and Movement exhibition at the Mahua Art Gallery. This show featured four artists: Atul Talukdar, Seema Kohli, Dimpy Menon and Ramesh Gorjaia, and was curated for the artists’ mutual thematic obsessions of cosmic energies and forms in space.
Kohli and Gorjaia are artists whose works are focused on the spiritual, using inner journeys of a personal nature to create works of art that are fluid and dreamlike. Menon and Talukdar work in sculpture, creating works in bronze that comment on the human movement in time and through space. Bangalore’s Myth and Movement show is a cohesive and intriguing look at how the metaphorical self meets the physical self, and reflects upon the ways these overlap in points of reflection. A weighty show of excellent works by these contemporary artists, the work here is an engaging experience that speaks to some of the many varied levels of contemporary experience in contemporary Bangalore.
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